Dec. 8, 2000 - More than 2,500 needy Western Slope residents could go without supplemental groceries just before Christmas after a charity food program in Delta was cut off this week by its main supplier in a dispute over giving out food boxes.

The program, Share the Harvest, was packing up 60,000 pounds of food on Thursday, loading it on tractor-trailers and sending it back to the Food Bank of the Rockies instead of putting it in food boxes for the needy in six Western Slope counties.

The food is being returned because the relationship between the Denver-based Food Bank and the 5-year-old Share the Harvest program has been severed in the wake of an undercover report by a Denver television station.

A KCNC-Channel 4 investigation of Share the Harvest showed the program was charging $15 per box of food rather than accepting whatever donations recipients volunteered, as the Food Bank requires. The report also alleged that Share the Harvest was distributing the food to some who aren't needy, also a violation of Food Bank requirements.

In the nearly two weeks since that report aired, Share the Harvest founders Greg and Judie Fedler negotiated with the Food Bank to try to keep their program operating.

Thursday, Greg Fedler said he had given up and was loading the semis to send back food that would have been distributed before Christmas.

"I tried until 2 p.m. Wednesday to put it back together, but Rick Rank (president and chief executive of the Food Bank of the Rockies) said they wouldn't work with us anymore," Fedler said.

Rank said the Fedlers would not agree to stop charging for the food boxes.

"They wouldn't agree to that," Rank said. "I feel bad for the Fedlers, and I really feel bad for the thousands of people over there who were being helped."

The Fedlers urged recipients to pay $15 or what they could to help offset the cost of boxes, which contained $80 worth of food. Last year, Fedler said, Share the Harvest spent $180,000 to buy food.

Rank said he is working with churches and other entities to see whether they can put together emergency boxes of dried foods that could be distributed before Christmas from the back of trucks in Delta, Mesa, Montrose, Gunnison, Montezuma and San Miguel counties. He said he is also looking for an entity to step in and take over the food distribution on a permanent basis.

"My heart is for the people," Rank said. "We are not going to abandon the people over there."

The Fedlers began their Share the Harvest program in 1995, after Judie Fedler saw the need in her job as a social worker in one of the poorer counties in the state. They started out giving 14 boxes of food to needy families. Their program began operating under the auspices of the Delta County Ministerial Fellowship so that it could qualify to receive Food Bank groceries, available to charitable organizations for 14 cents a pound.

Rank said he received complaints two years ago that Share the Harvest was charging for food boxes. He said he spent time with the Fedlers to make sure they understood Food Bank rules.

Problems came to light again after KCNC reporter Brian Maas pretended to be a needy person and was told by Share the Harvest workers that he would have to pay $15 for the food. Maas also interviewed people leaving the distribution center with food who may not have met the criteria of being needy - making more than 175 percent above what is considered a poverty wage. A poverty-level wage is $1,288 a month for a single person.

Greg Fedler said Maas was turned down because he was "arrogant" and didn't appear to be needy. He said Maas is the only person who has been sent away without food.

Fedler said that Share the Harvest used to require recipients to sign a statement of need, but that segment was accidentally deleted from forms last month. That led to Maas' allegation that people who didn't qualify were receiving food.

Fedler said Maas concentrated on mistakes and did not report on the good work of Share the Harvest. That is why Fedler recorded a message last week on the Share the Harvest telephone instructing callers to phone Maas or the Food Bank if they needed groceries.

Rank called Maas' report "low down" and said he urged him not to air it. Maas is on vacation and was not available to comment.

Larry Sebring, a Delta minister who worked with the program, admitted that "we screwed up." But Sebring said it's a shame the procedural mistakes are going to shut down Share the Harvest.

"We all made mistakes - except for the people who need that food," Sebring said.

Rank said he believes Share the Harvest's problems were limited to mistakes. He said two investigations of Share the Harvest financial records show that the Fedler's were not making unethical financial gains from the food distribution program. Sebring said the Fedlers were not taking from the program.

"If there were more people in Colorado like the Fedlers, this would be a whole lot better world," Sebring said. "They were not getting rich. They were givers."

Sebring said that while the Channel 4 story was airing, the Fedlers were in California receiving an award from a prison ministries organization for using volunteers from the Delta County Correctional Center to help with their program.

Cindy Watts, a disabled Delta County resident who has counted on a monthly box of free groceries from the Share the Harvest, said she wished the mistakes could have been rectified without closing the program.

The boxes of rice, frozen chicken, beans, soup, macaroni and seasonal fresh fruits and vegetables Watts received every month helped her stretch the $79 in food stamps that make up her entire monthly food budget.

Without Share the Harvest, she may have to go without some meals, she said.

"It's not right to punish those of us who really need it," Watts said.

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